"The cows continue to browse seedling apple trees thus for twenty years or more, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad that they become their own fence, when some interior shoot, which their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy; for it has not forgotten its high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph. Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. ...By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen... I make haste to taste the new and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous varieties of fruit invented by Van Mons and Knight. This is the system of Van Cow, and she has invented far more memorable varieties than both of them. -- Henry David Thoreau, 'Wild Apples', pp. 28, 30.